[JohnPrine]

Diminishing returns don't apply for SBF - his life's goal is to fund effective altruist charities, so each billion is as valuable as the last as long as there are good projects to fund.

I don't think people are comprehending how tragic this whole situation is (acknowledging that it's SBF's fault). This collapse put the brakes on a powerful force for good, and lives that would have been saved won't anymore.

[baobabKoodaa]

> Diminishing returns don't apply for SBF - his life's goal is to fund effective altruist charities, so each billion is as valuable as the last as long as there are good projects to fund.

Let's be honest: we don't know what his life goals are. He said that his goal is to fund charities, but that's a pretty common thing for wealthy people in the U.S. to say because saying so gives you a lot of social status at no cost. Very few people actually proceed with any plans of significant charitable donations.

[jefftk]

We don't know what his life goals were, but we do know that he was sending a huge amount of money via the FTX Future Fund, granting it to a wide range of projects. That whole team resigned yesterday: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xafpj3on76uRDoBja/...

[baobabKoodaa]

5 days later and now we know: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3FuCAM_X4mREv2FJTnDv_QMmD6M=...

from: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-frie...

[joosters]

Well he failed miserably at that. If he had stuck with his original supposed $1 billion, he could have given almost all of it away and still lived a very comfortable life. As it stands now, his charitable foundation has pledged far less than $1 billion (at it remains to be seen just how much it pledged actually gets paid out).

Perhaps if he had spent more time donating money (his stated aim) rather than inventing convoluted financial structures (FTX has over 100 related companies!), he would have achieved more, and cost people a lot less.

[jefftk]

There are lots of reasons to be mad and lots of red flags, but having over a hundred companies is pretty normal in this space. To operate a financial business legally across many jurisdictions you generally need to have subsidiaries in each jurisdiction. Ex: https://wise.com/help/articles/2974131/what-are-the-wise-gro...

[joosters]

Not true - the FT took a look at the org chart of FTX, it's way more complicated than even Lehman Brothers - https://www.ft.com/content/c28e0570-d4c4-433c-b0a0-c99fba613...

[jefftk]

Lehman Brothers didn't allow individuals in many countries around the world to make trades on their platform, so I don't think they're a good comparison here.

(Sorry for saying "financial" earlier when the reference class is really something more specific like "international retail finance")

[coffeebeqn]

It’s only ”good” if you believe the ends justify any means. What about FTX customers? People aren’t pawns you can play with for your “greater cause”

[jefftk]

No one in effective altruism is going to defend secretly gambling customer funds, and that isn't what I read your parent as saying?

[grey-area]

Most obscenely rich people in history attempt to redeem their reputation at some point through philanthropy, from Nobel to Gates. It’s an old story and the guilt which leads to philanthropy doesn’t justify the means.

[from]

Jho Low gave a few hundred million to charity too after stealing a few billion from the Malaysian government. It's easy to be charitable if it's not your money you're giving! But I guess you're right that this is a different than that. No one is really saying that he got rich from this massive fraud (although a clear accounting of what actually happened is not available yet and probably won't be for years), in fact he lost most of his net worth because of it.

[boeingUH60]

No, Bankman-Fried is a scheming fraudster hiding under the cloak of so-called “effective altruism”. He’d have done much better for the world if he didn’t found a crypto exchange promoting scams and being reckless enough to trade with user deposits and losing it all.